New Mobo - SATA?

zAbbo

Im inline now for a new mobo,ram,chip combo

Im planing to go down the AMD road with an Xp2200+

I want a decent mobo, with RAID and 400mhz RAM
I want it to be upgradeable and slighlty future proof(agp8x, USB2.0)

One thing im stuck on is SATA (serial ATA), i dont wanna get a new mobo to find out that sata could improve my performance for only a few quid more.

So, can some AMD head advise me.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated, also advise on RAM would also help, im used to using RDRAM 800, so i dont wanna downgrade so to speak.

Mahcine will be used as a general machine(gaming, web dev etc.)

astrofool

abit at7-max2 probs the best motherboard out there features wise, they've put the ps2 ports back on it, which helps with keyboards.

SATA will be the technology of choice hard disk wise, it'll be at least 6 months before the drives start going main stream however. Abit bundle adaptors that let you use parallel drives with the sata cables, no performance advantage, but nu bulky ide cables either.

Athlons can't take rdram anyway. Both Asus and Abit are probably the best route if u're going with ddr400 ram, but ddr400 is exepensive, and the performance advantage is negligable. Good ddr333 ram is almost as good, and cheaper.

If you can get the XP 2400+, uses a new stepping of the thoroughbred core, and if used with an abit board, is multiplier unlocked apparantly, meaning u can run it on a 166 bus as opposed to the normal 133 bus.

zAbbo

so will sata be the overated standard that was ata100/133 etc.

Would a normal IDE HDD be the right choice for sata board.

Hmm so many choices here, are the 2200+ and the 2400+ bascially not the same chips.

Ive used abit boards in the past and im extremly happy with there performance

netman

SATA won't really bring you any performance benefit, as the tests have shown. Neater cables are about the only thing it's got going for it at the moment. 150MB/s troughput isn't realized even by the fastest SCSI drives, so you won't be getting any benefit from that either.

Seagate will launch a SATA version of their Barracuda IDE drive with 8mb buffer instead of 2mb, so you'll see a performance difference there, but not thanks to SATA.

In terms of making sure your purchase is future-proof, well, in the computer business you can pretty much forget about it. 3 months down the line something new, better and faster will appear.

I think you could go for something that offers best value for money, and that's not already obsolete.

You won't see any benefit from AGP 8X either, and all AGP 8X cards will be downwards compatibile with AGP 4X, so you can forget about that little detail too.

DDR400 RAM is expensive, and guess what, it uses the same chips as DDR333. That's the case with a wide variety of manufacturers. So why not get yourself some cheaper DDR333 RAM, and if you want DDR400 speeds, overclock it. Also, VIA KT400, the only chipset currently supporting DDR400 memory is actually slower with DDR400 RAM than with DDR333 RAM. Add to that the fact that it only officially supports ONE memory module when working at DDR400 and you'll know it's begging for trouble.

As far as AMD is concerned, EPoX have proven to deliver stable, feature-rich and affordable motherboards. I'm a big fan of ABIT, and if it were me deciding what to buy I'd limit my choice to these two manufacturers.

In terms of drives, IBM drives have become quite flaky, there's zillions of reports on the net of newer IBM drives failing (75GXP series onwards), and even though I'm still using an IBM drive I wouldn't really recommend it. Seagate or WD is a better choice, in which case WD offers better performance but Seagate has a strong tradition in making quality drives.

And the last thing - don't forget a good power supply. All of these babies suck a lot of juice from the PSU, and the cheaper models don't offer any protection, and can barely withstand the declared power output. You wouldn't want your computer crashing often, or getting damaged, just because you wouldn't spend an extra €50 on a decent PSU.